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Articles Conference Reviews |
2007D11DeanD.11: The Nitty Gritty of the Research Moment: Three Interview Based Studies of College Writing This session, chaired by Charles Bazerman of the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), focused on three research studies conducted by three different graduate students at UCSB, and all of the researchers drew heavily on the use of interviewing. Jessie Singer: “Progress through the Struggle: An Interview Based Study of Successful Latino/a College Writers” Singer discussed not only her interview protocol, which involved anywhere from two to six interviews, but about her principal concern in her research: the way that various people in Latino/a students lives acted as what Deborah Brandt calls “literacy sponsors”. Singer pointed out that for the students she interviewed literacy sponsorship was contextualized in terms of various locations and people: home (parents and family); school (teachers and administrators); the community (friends and the ethos of the community); and the self. The result of this was that for these students the writing process took on elements of the people and locations. Many students spoke of needing “noise and chaos” to work—which run contrary to the idealized version of the writer working in a calm, quiet place. Also, Singer pointed out the way that the students she interviewed needed to have people believe that they could “make it,” and that for many of the students, making it mean something not only to them, but to their families and home communities. Ultimately, the strengths of Singer’s presentation were her careful description of her methodology and the choices she consciously made in setting up her qualitatively oriented interview protocol. Also, selfishly, it was a good reminder to me, since I teach at UCSB, that I need to keep in mind how my students write, and what I can do to sponsor their literacy—now that they do not necessarily have immediate and instant access to their home languages, cultures, and worlds. Cissy Ross: “Environmental Studies Talks to Composition, but Who’s Listening?” Ross started off her talk by making reference to Paul Prior and the WAC movement, and that she was interested, in terms of her research, in the idea of using interviews to do research in Writing in the Disciplines. From here, Ross moved onto a discussion of how as someone with 20 years of journalistic experience, you would think that interviews and interviewing would not be problematic for her. However, that was not the case. To make her point, Ross shared the experience of an interview that she, as a researcher, struggled with: an interview with a Professor of Sociology at UCSB that she was studying. The problem here was not her interview protocol, the interviewee himself, or anything else that we might think of, but the disciplines of one discipline (Sociology) rubbing against and abrading the conventions of our shared discipline (Composition). From here, Ross moved to her main approach to dealing with working through interview difficulties that surround disciplinary conventions: careful and engaged listening. Through references to the literature in the field and her own experience, Ross made a compelling argument for the ways that what Susan Bauer calls “dangerous listening” could help us communicate across disciplinary boundaries (xix). This sort of listening demands openness on the part of the researcher—and a willingness to forego easy answers and conclusions. Most significantly, it involves taking time. Ross’ presentation was engaging on many levels, and it made some very good points about both the limits, and advantages, of interviewing as a research strategy across disciplines. Paul Rogers: “Enriching our Methodological Repertoire: Retrospective Interviews on Writing in Work and School” Rogers started out by saying that he was working with data collected about writing in a large archive of writing at Stanford University. Then he went onto make some very compelling points about the nature and limitations of interviewing as a research methodology. Rogers pointed out that a study, which looked at leading journals in the field, found that in 500 research-based articles 51.4% of researchers in Writing Studies used some form of interviewing. Rogers point, and it’s a good one, seemed to be this: are we relying too heavily on interviewing as a research methodology? Might we not want to think a bit about other research methodologies, particularly since interviews are always at a temporal remove from the writing that actually occurred? Rogers, then went onto make some fine points about the benefits of interviewing, the way it can allow for a collaboration in meaning making between the interview subject and the research, that it is a good fit for longitudinal studies, and it dovetails nicely with ethnographic research in particular; however, he made me consider this important question: why do I, as a researcher, put so much stock in interviews, and what other methodologies am I neglecting because interviewing seems a “good fit.” Final Thoughts on the Session This was one of those rare sessions where you get to not only hear what people have done in their own research, but you gain ideas for the research that you might conduct. Also I received an ancillary benefit from attending this session because I work at the same institution as the presenters: I got to see my students and my research anew because my colleagues were willing to share their work with me and the wider world of composition. Work Cited Bauer, Susan. Confiding: A Psychotherapist and Her Patients Search for Stories to Live By. New York: Harper Collins, 1994.
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